


cold sleep, cold comfort

by ninemoons42



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Recovering, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Coda, Gen, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Spoilers, Steve Rogers Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 18:29:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6765064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief look at Steve Rogers -- and the sage words of T'Challa -- in the immediate aftermath of <i>Captain America: Civil War</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cold sleep, cold comfort

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this the weekend after seeing _Captain America: Civil War_ , which hit movie theaters in the Philippines on 27 April. I needed to write it. The words were trying to get out of me.

Steve stares out the floor-to-ceiling windows, and watches the endless waves of mist roll in -– not even the sun in its steady inexorable rise can burn it all away -– and somewhere, in one of the rooms of this hidden sanctuary full of science and solemn faces, his friend sleeps.

Bucky sleeps, and there are still bits and pieces and HYDRA shrapnel-thoughts hidden in his mind, hidden in his nerves.

Steve shivers, and he can’t blame all of it on the climate control. He’d caught a glimpse of those pages, that red notebook with the black star embossed on its cover. A list of words. The power of those random words, those random sounds: they don’t mean anything, they don’t come up to a coherent sentence, but taken all together -– well, he’s seen what those random words can do. 

_A_ trigger. He can’t possibly think that they’re the only triggers. He’d be foolish to think that there would only be one set. For all its fuck-ups, HYDRA’s been pretty thorough in terms of its Soldier: too many places where Bucky was wiped and reprogrammed and hurt. Too many men entrusted with him, with his custody. Helmut Zemo’d only scratched the surface. Steve is painfully aware that _he_ hasn’t even begun to do so.

He wants to find that notebook and read the whole thing and then burn it down to its component molecules. 

He’s not allowed to see Bucky very often. The men and women here: they’re kind, they have compassion written all over their faces, they seem to know what they’re doing –- but they are also firm. They bar Steve’s path, most days. They are always polite. “We’re sorry, sir. He is not well today.”

So Steve grasps at straws. 

He grasps at Bucky, Bucky who made a choice. Who knew what he was doing when he went back under. Who knew what he had to do in order to get better, or at least to take a step in that direction.

He grasps at that moment in the Quinjet: for a moment it had been Brooklyn, it had been all those nameless camps among the Howling Commandos. 

And Steve is here, in this hidden heart of the Wakandan jungles, holding on to the drawn-out fraying thread of his hope.

From a comfortable suite of rooms to sterile rooms filled with computer-monitor-ghost-light and the beeps that correspond to Bucky’s vital signs: Steve wears that path thin. He carries the days and nights on his shoulders.

“You would do well to speak to someone about your fears,” T’Challa says, over a secure line.

“Where would I begin,” Steve says. 

“Only you would know the answer to that question, of course. But I would be more than happy to listen to you, when I can make the time.”

Steve thinks of hope and of Bucky and of words, and says, “We’ll see.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Tumblr [here](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/143616135031/civil-war-spoilers-this-is-a-coda-fic-civil-war).


End file.
